


White Lies

by oliwellwhocares



Series: Tonight. [1]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Fix-It, Gen, M/M, Relationship Study, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:26:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26548216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oliwellwhocares/pseuds/oliwellwhocares
Summary: Sylvain asks him a favor.“Will you stay with me,” he asks.Felix grants favors and runs away.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Others, Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Series: Tonight. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1930588
Kudos: 5





	White Lies

**Author's Note:**

> All titles are from Arms Tonite, by Mother Mother, which is a PAINFULLY sylvix song

####  1207, 19th of the Red Wolf Moon.

Sylvain asks him a favor.

“Will you stay with me,” he asks. 

Felix says no, and Sylvain laughs. Felix has known him for decades, and he still does that. Laugh when he’s in pain. Felix is thinking, as hard as he can, that he doesn’t understand why he’s like that, trying to drown the part of himself telling him that he does know.

Sylvain laughs, and tells him things Felix will be able to pretend he forgot. Things about the job. That’s what he’s here for. That’s why he’s seeing Sylvain again, after years, after decades, after 21 years and 6 months and 9 days, because the Margrave has a job for him. Nothing personal, is what it is. What Sylvain is saying, probably.

Felix does the job. His friends know—everyone knows that Felix is okay with granting a favor, but only one. He does the job, and he does not stay. 

* * *

####  1186, 10th of the Harpstring Moon.

Edelgard Von Hresvelg, Emperor of united Fodlan, asks him a favor.

The war is over. People bled, and people died, and Dimitri died but did not bleed. Only humans do.

The war is over. “Felix,” she says. She’s the Emperor. Through years and years, she waged this war, she shed blood and killed for the future she saw. She killed Dimitri for it.

The war is over. “Felix,” she says. She’s the one he chose to follow. He shed blood and killed for her. She’s his Emperor.

“Yes,” he says.

“I have a favor to ask of you.”

Her eyes are very clear. They have always been. Her hair is striking, of course, and everyone is drawn to it, but her eyes have always seemed, to him, to contain even more light. The kind the church told you to be afraid of, the kind that represented that the Goddess was all, all love and all fury. He never liked looking into people’s eyes, most people. Hers even less, and he looks away.

“I’m listening.”

“Will you watch over Fraldarius, in a time of peace, like you did in time of war?”

Like everything she says, it sounds practiced, and her voice is strong enough that it doesn’t matter anyway.

Will he? 

He didn’t watch over Fraldarius in time of war. They were fighting, all of them, and against their own territories, for some of them. It was Rodrigue that took care of the Fraldarius dukedom, up until Ferdinand killed him and Felix watched. Rodrigue took care of it.

That’s not really true. No matter how much the nobility tried to believe it, the land is more than them. Fraldarius is more than lucky blood. Edelgard knows that, she always did.

Is that what she means? That Felix directed the imperial troops to spare as many lives as possible, to always offer surrender before death. That he kept track of the villages and cities that pledged loyalty to the Empire and took care to plan attacks around them. That he made sure to know which trade routes could be left functioning, trying not to let anyone starve, from miles away, while he was busy trying not to die, battle after battle.

Because he didn’t do that either. Sylvain did. Sylvain wrote dozens of letters and kept track of a thousand things while  _ Felix _ was trying to keep himself alive and keep Sylvain alive and keep a promise alive.

Sylvain will take care of Gautier. He’ll go back, bury his parents who deserve to be left rotting on the roof of their estate. It’s the only place in the whole frozen territory that gets the tiniest bit of heat from the sun. He’ll rule and take care of a land where the food is bitter and the people even more so. He’ll look over every patch of dirt that deserves to be left abandoned and taken over by the black roots running everywhere through its ground. He’ll negotiate and sign treaties with Sreng, with the men who tried to kidnap and assassinate him ever since he was born. 

And if Felix goes back to Fraldarius, Sylvain will do all of that here, too. 

He’ll give Felix advice on paperwork and will employ people for him to help with it, he’ll organise joint expeditions, he’ll come visit him for his birthday, two weeks late, at the end of the winter, and will complain that Felix doesn’t come for his, when spring is brightening into summer.

The war is over. Sylvain used to kiss him, during the war, bruising and bloody and laughing because he was in pain. He will surely kiss him again now, Felix thinks, softly and laughing sincerely when Felix bites him, and his stomach is twisting.

“I won’t,” he’s already said, and Edelgard didn’t ask why.

“There are still places where my sword can be of use,” he says anyway.

“Indeed,” she answers, and still doesn’t tell him about Those Who Slither In The Dark until a week later. “Will you fight for me again,” she asks of him, and he nods.

* * *

####  1188, 13th of the Pegasus Moon.

Annette has always refused to be anything less than his friend, and decides to ask him a favor the week before his birthday.

“What would Lys' want for her birthday cake?” she asks, first. 

Lysithea doesn’t celebrate her birthday. She hates it, and everybody knows why. She has that in common with Felix, even though nobody knows why  _ he  _ hates it. 

Annette knows, for Lysithea. Maybe she knows for Felix too. He answers her regardless. 

“I doubt even you could bake a cake to save her life.”

Annette looks disappointed by his answer. 

“It’s not for her birthday, Felix. Since she doesn’t celebrate it, she doesn’t get a birthday cake, and that’s awful! So I thought I might bake one for her anyway!”

Annette arrived at Fhirdiad two hours ago, as Felix was leaving it, and dragged him to the inn closest to the palace immediately. She makes the trip from Garreg Mach sometimes, for whatever reasons a sorcery professor might need to. Felix can’t imagine, he’s not a teacher, and he’s not a baker either. 

“I don’t know what she likes.”

Annette pouts exaggeratedly around a mouthful of bread and cheese. He wonders if she really gets paid enough by the school to afford the meal she’s currently inhaling. 

“But she’s always baking for you!”

Felix used to always see them in a corner of the monastery, or hiding behind a tent, speaking in hushed voices and trading sweets. Now, he hasn’t seen Lysithea in years. 

“You see.” Annette picks up the conversation by herself. “Lin and I have been working, and we thought we might share what we found on Crest experiments with her, and it’s looking pretty good but it would be more efficient if the three of us think together, right! So, we’re planning a trip in four months, and I wanted to bake something for her then! I thought you might help, but it’s fine, you can help me decide once we’re there,” she says with pleading eyes. 

“I don’t know anything about magic.”

It’s not the kind of thing he can do for Lysithea.

“Well, it’s fine! All of her friends aren’t versed in magic, but we wanted to ask everyone to be there.” She starts waving around, wine sloshing in her cup. “It’s not a birthday party, but we don’t want to leave her to be alone in her mansion and forget about us, you know,” Felix doesn’t know, actually, “so Lin is going with Cas, obviously, and I talked about it with Bernie and I sent a letter to Thea, so I was thinking, well, you might as well ask, well, the others, right?”

Right.

“I can tell Ingrid.” Ingrid would drag him and Sylvain to the Ordelia estate with her own two hands if she knew. She knows what Felix is doing, probably. She keeps in touch with her friends.

He’ll send her a letter, that will be safer.

“I won’t be there.” He realises as he tells her. There’s no way to avoid Sylvain being here, and he has work to do, anyway. 

“Lys' will want to see you,” she pleads. She looks sad, and she looks like she doesn’t believe in it. “I’ll want to see you too, you barely visit any of us.”

He sees Annette in Fhirdiad sometimes, and he writes to Ingrid, and Lysithea, and Dorothea will drag him to the palace when he’ll go to Brigid in a few months. He can’t do much more than that, he has work.

“I’ll write.”

She’s disappointed. It’s getting late, and she tears the last piece of bread in two. He pushes both parts towards her. He’s not hungry anyway.

“Well, you better.” She swallows a piece. “You’re paying, by the way, right?”

He takes the last piece of bread, and pays. 

* * *

####  1191, 27th of the Pegasus Moon.

Lysithea is alive, and she asks him a favor. 

One year ago, Felix was at her estate for the week between each of their birthdays, just like for the last three years, and Lysithea had told him “So I guess I’m gonna live. I’m coming with you this year.”

She hadn’t really asked, her bag ready and her eyes set, and everyone knew, of course, that she was cured. It had been a month since she had come back from whatever cursed place Linhardt had managed to find where he had torn the magic away from Lysithea and Edelgard. Black roots were starting to grow near her skull, and it gave her strange bicolored eyebrows. It was going to be her birthday, and whether she wanted it or not, everyone was going to be there. He had to leave, and he understood that she also needed to.

They’re coming back now, because it was always what Lysithea wanted to do. Come back to her family, help them, help their people. Well, not really their people anymore. As of last year, there’s no more official noble families. Still, like most of them, House Ordelia takes care of a lot of the organisation in their old territory. Someone has to do it. Mostly, they’re simply doing it with slightly less fancy clothes, and more people living in the castle with them. 

So, Lysithea comes back to her family, and Felix stays for a few days, because no mercenary would refuse being fed and sleeping in a bed for a few days. Lysithea was not a bad travel partner for this year, her impressive magic abilities complementing Felix’s skills pretty nicely, and they had been able to afford to take a few missions that Felix alone might have had to pass up. She was also constantly complaining whenever they had to sleep outside, and she kept spending all of their money on sweets. So it will be easier to come back to his own life once he leaves this place.

He hasn’t decided when that will be yet, the morning Lysithea’s mother says: “Did Miss River tell you that her son wants to help with the cake?”

Lysithea just walked into the room, and Felix sees her turn around sharply, but not before her mother continues, “I told him you might refuse, but we haven’t had the chance to celebrate your birthday in so long, don’t you want some help—”

“WELL,” Lysithea interrupts loudly, “I, well, yes, sure.”

Felix is staring at her. She’s going to celebrate her birthday, apparently. Surely, with all of her friends who were so worried about her for so long. People that Felix knows too. It’s  _ tomorrow.  _

Lysithea has already left the room when he stands up, but he has longer legs and more stamina, and catches up to her two hallways later, as she tries to slip in the kitchen.

She turns back to him abruptly, and says “Yes Felix?” with a haughty tone that no one can match. Still, she’s speaking a little too fast.

“I’m leaving,” he says, and her face crumbles.

She’s twenty-seven now, well, almost. An adult that grew up and survived, and never outgrew her childish habit to let her emotions show all over herself as soon as she feels them.

She straightens up, her face almost gone back to neutrality, but her eyes still betraying her.

“Stay for my birthday, Felix.”

She’s upset, obviously. Felix is going to refuse, and she’s going to say please, and then he won’t know what to do, but he can’t stay.

He sighs.

“What can I do for you, Lysithea,” he says, because he’s still too proud to beg,  _ not that.  _ He can’t stay, can’t be here for these few days. Can’t stay forever either, not here, with her, with all the others.

“You know,” she says, and they’ve always been more similar than either of them would like to admit. “I still don’t want a birthday, really.”

She smiles hesitantly, and Felix smiles back, and they leave that night. 

* * *

####  1195, 18th of the Verdant Rain Moon.

Ferdinand Von Aegir is insufferable, and he asks him a favor. 

“I should go talk to him.”

There’s no need for Felix to look away from the pieces of spiced meat he’s piling up on a plate to know that Ferdinand is looking at the Minister of the Imperial Household, and that said Minister is completely ignoring him in favor of hovering menacingly over his Emperor.

She arrived just after noon, which means that the latest guests will be here before tomorrow, in time for the wedding. In time for Petra to proclaim her love for the one she’s finally making her queen, in front of her country, and in front of all of her friends with unresolved emotional issues. Petra can be rude.

“What do you think, Felix?”

Ferdinand is not asking, or more precisely, he’s not asking that. Ferdinand has long since mastered the art of never speaking plainly and yet being painfully obvious, and he’s asking  _ Felix, please, come with me to talk to the man I’m obsessed with that I’m too cowardly to go to by myself for some unspecified reason _ . 

And Felix is not going to, because Edelgard arrived with what passes for her court in the empire barely settling into her reforms, and it’s no one he wants to see. 

He grunts non-commitly in response, but Ferdinand is an idiot.

“Simply, I should greet our Emperor. What must happen after that will happen.”

Yes, of course, like Edelgard wouldn’t push them right into each other’s arms. Edelgard can be rude too. This might simply be how rulers are. 

“Will you go with me?”

Ah, there we go.

“No,” answers Felix.

Ferdinand, a grown man who fought in a war, pouts.

“It would be improper to ignore our Emperor.”

“You’ll be seated right next to her at dinner.”

Brigid has a tradition of everyone sitting wherever they want and moving around during events, which seems to be begging for trouble. Then again, everyone doesn’t have Fodlan levels of political and inter-personal drama, so it may be reasonable for them. Still, neither Ferdinand nor Hubert would stray very far from their precious Emperor, and so she’ll be seated with one man on each side, like she is in her own palace, until the brides-to-be manage to distract the two men with each other and steal Edelgard for themselves.

Felix will be watching this, and trying to find any neighbor for himself that isn’t tall, with red hair and a strained smile, and hasn’t been staring at him for half an hour.

Ferdinand isn’t a subtle person.

“Don’t you want to go talk to Sylvain?”

Before the sentence is over, Felix is already standing up and walking away.

Ferdinand splutters behind him, but he’s too prideful to ask after Felix.

The complex Brigid architecture and Felix’s tendencies to go years without seeing some of his friends work well enough to occupy him for a good part of the evening, walking in circles around a room where Sylvain is always on the other side.

When the meal is served, Ferdinand comes back.

“Would you sit beside me,” he asks, very calm, and surprisingly not really looking like it’s dealing a terrible blow to his pride to lower himself that way, or whatever. He hasn’t looked like that in a while, in his encounters with Felix, but Felix keeps expecting it. 

Still, Ferdinand looks like he actually wants to do this, and Hubert is looking at him, now.

Felix says yes.

* * *

####  1200, 3rd of the Wyvern Moon.

Annette, looking radiant in her teacher’s robes, asks him a favor.

“You visit everyone else too, right?” she asks.

For someone who just spent 30 solid minutes berating him for how little news he gives her, and how he  _ never visits _ , she seems to have gotten over it. Maybe. It’s hard to interpret what the bruising grip she has on his arm really means.

The problem with Annette is that he seems unable to tell her no.

“How was Yato this morning,” he says instead, because at the very least she never blamed him for switching topics.

Her face brightens, which is not exactly what he expected.

“Oh, Felix, you remember him! He was  _ so  _ sweet today!”

He doesn’t tell her that the last time he remembers reading her words about the kid, she’d been complaining about what a brat he was being. It’s not worth mentioning, probably. Kids change their mood even faster than Annette does. Felix certainly did, as a child, or so he was told by—everyone. 

They walk through the monastery, because neither of them can bear stillness with much grace. It’s strange, how different it is from the wartime, and yet different from the school it was in their days, too. 

Linhardt is asleep in the library, when they pass by the open door, and even this is so different that he can’t help but mention it.

“It changed,” he says.

Annette looks at him for a second. She was talking about the theory she’s currently trying to simplify for her first-year students, that he only barely understands because of how she talks about it constantly, so it’s not the kind of subject he’s expected to have an opinion on.

“This place,” he clarifies, but she’s already nodding.

“It did, right. Linhardt thinks it’s because of how much was rebuilt.” It’s a nice explanation. Linhardt is good at giving those, while making it obvious how much more complicated it is and how only he knows the true extent of it. 

“I think,” Annette continues, “it’s because—It’s her...” She breathes. She’s going to talk about Rhea.

“Because Rhea is dead.” She glances at him. Maybe he’s not supposed to say that name here, but she doesn’t seem to be mad at him.

“She was always watching,” she nods. 

Maybe she’s right. A lot of people have been watching Felix his whole life, and he certainly didn’t feel the same thing when Rodrigue died than when Rhea did, but maybe she’s right.

Her shoulders loosen as she breathes, and continues.

“The school organisation changed a lot too, you know! Conditions for admission, for one!”

She talked about it a thousand times in her letters, splotching the ink with an enthusiastic hand. She talks about it every time he sees her too, always smiling and waving around. He lets himself walk, and nod, and look at her, at how she looks, when she forgets who might be watching.

Felix hasn’t stopped feeling the stares turned on him. Not when his father died, not when Rhea did. He doesn’t think about whether or not they will stop: they will, or they won’t, and all he can do is walk. It’s nice, to do it with Annette. 

The sun is going down, and will cross the horizon in less than an hour. Felix doesn’t mind riding at night, but Annette does mind seeing him do it, and there is no place for him to sleep here, apart from her bed where they would spend the whole night kicking each other and trying to be more fond than upset about the memories it brings up.

The sun is going down, and so he’s leaving. 

“Will you visit the others,” she asks again, her tone that much more pleading. He told her about hunting trips with Ingrid, in a hypothetical future that they both know his old friend won’t let him escape. He told her about Dorothea’s invitation for next year, given during the few minutes she managed to catch with him before he fled the wedding, and they both know that the exasperation he displayed doesn’t mean much in the face of her anger and Petra’s disappointment. She knows he met Caspar, on the road coming here, and that they cross paths sometimes when he inevitably manages to sweep Linhardt in an adventure or two. She knows he’ll let himself be bothered by Lysithea and Ferdinand, she knows he’ll always answer to their Emperor and the professor.

She’s asking about Sylvain, really, and Felix can’t seem to tell her no.

She asks, and Felix doesn’t know how to tell her that simply hearing his last name plants a searing blade in his stomach, that soon the setting sun will light her hair up in red flames and then he won’t be able to look at her, doesn’t know how to tell her what he thinks: that if they see each other again, one of them will have to die, and then where would that leave the other one.

“Then,” she says, because it is Annette, and no one is ever able to guess when she will step right into the most inconsiderate thing to say, and when she’ll understand all the unspoken details of the most delicate situation. 

“Then, will you visit me again?”

With Felix, it is easy. He will almost always say the inconsiderate thing. But he tries, with her, and he says yes.

* * *

####  1205, 6th of the Lone Moon.

Ingrid is, quite frankly, insufferable, especially when she wants something. She asked him a favor, and won’t take no for an answer.

“And if you don’t go to him,” she rants, and Felix tunes her out almost automatically. They’ve been on this mission for three weeks, they have months left to go, and on the first day, she told him, “When this is done, you’ll go see Sylvain.” He hadn’t even answered, and then had told her no the next time, and then tried everything he could every time she brought it up, to no avail.

He would leave, but this is official Empire business, which means that she’ll just drag him back and be even more annoying about it. This is why he accepts those missions so rarely (but then again, he isn’t offered so much of them). 

However, there’s also the fact that so far, they took care of scouting and planning by themselves, but soon they’ll have some troops to manage, to actually move on to the action part of all of this. They’re close enough to the border that King Khalid will almost certainly get involved, which means that Lorenz will then show up without anyone inviting him. All of this is, in one and only one way, good news, because Ingrid is nothing if not honorable, and would find it disgraceful to speak about personal matters in front of the people they’re supposed to have a work relationship with. The fact that she’s supposed to have a work relationship with Felix doesn’t really come into account. It’s not like they have ever been proper nobles together, anyway.

So there's only a few days left of this. Hearing the same name over and over, and he had some sort of hope, or simply just a thought, that this might work in making him just a little bit less sick every time he hears it, but it doesn’t. The name is reliable and faithful and refuses to let him pretend, and it twists his guts and whistles in his ears.

It’s only a few days.

The day before their troops arrive, well, the night, really, Ingrid asks him a favor. It starts like this: she’s brushing the horses, and while he walks back to the fire with the wild pheasants he caught, Ingrid speaks:

“I’m happy that you’ve chosen a life for yourself, you know.”

She’s not looking at his eyes, which may not be a good sign, but is better for him. Still, she’s sincere. Felix remembers, every time, all the chances they had at growing apart. If there’s a reason that they cannot stop being friends, it’s this: they can always tell when the other is lying, or not. It’s always been true for the four of them. 

If there’s a reason they’re still friends, it’s this: she likes him most when he makes his own choices, and he does too, even when it’s choices that the other hates, which is most of them. 

So, “I know,” he answers, and doesn’t say that he’s happy for her. The knight and the mercenary, one still brushing the same mane and the other still holding the same dead birds, smile at each other. They’re still friends, Felix realises.

It’s been years, and war, and years, and this stayed.

“Give me this favor, Felix. You’ve chosen this life, and who you are, so hold on to your honor as a mercenary.”

Here is Ingrid’s honor, that doesn’t mean anything to him. She knows that, they know each other, and he knows what she means, and she’s still not looking at him in the eyes. Felix is still happy for it. 

“The next time you’re offered a job, something no one else can do, you’ll accept it, alright?”

The dead birds are starting to get heavy. Ingrid never really let knighthood go, he thinks.

“Right,” he says. 

* * *

####  1207.

There’s trouble in Gautier. Complicated trouble with villages on the border with Sreng, and the empire can’t intervene but it needs someone competent. He’s offered the job.

When Sylvain sees him, he doesn’t smile. Sylvain doesn’t lie to him, unless he can’t help it.

He looks at him, he keeps looking at him. Felix feels it heavy like fabric and dead birds and years and stares on his neck. When he turns around it burns through his eyes to the inside of his skull. Did it ever stop feeling like that, during 21 years? during 45 years.

Stay, Sylvain asks, and if Felix stays, he’ll die in his arms. 

Felix says no, and thinks  _ please _ , and leaves in the night.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I promise it IS a fix-it, the second chapter will be up in one or two weeks!! please let me know if you liked the first one!


End file.
